In the trial and execution of Paanchi, we encounter another legal question about that point at which speech becomes illegal action. The earlier trial of Korihor had tested the limits of free speech under the laws of Mosiah guaranteeing the freedom of belief and presumably the expressions thereof. The issue now became whether Nephite law allowed or required Paanchi to be punished for expressing intent to rebel against the government. This case is only briefly reported, but from this case came the Nephite precedent that legally defined the point at which conspiratorial planning becomes legally actionable as treason.
In all societies, crimes involving conspiracy and incitement are always difficult to define and even harder to enforce. Given the difficulties that the Nephites experienced with the secret combinations of the Gadianton robbers during the time covered by the book of Helaman in the second half of the final century before the coming of Christ, it can be surmised that this legal concept became a key point in Nephite law at this time. Perhaps for this very reason, the case of Paanchi was positioned by the writers and abridgers of the book of Helaman at the very outset of this book as a leading legal issue during this period of Nephite history. Mormon will interject his own comments on a few occasions as he goes along in his abridgment of the book of Helaman, most notably in Helaman 3:12–14, where he states that the problems of conspiracy and secret combinations would eventually prove to be “the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi.”
Interestingly, Paanchi’s crime was merely that of being about to incite a rebellion. The text says twice that he was “about to” set his plan into action: “therefore, he was about to flatter away those people to rise up in rebellion; … as he was about to do this” (Helaman 1:7-8). Apparently, he was apprehended and stopped just after he went beyond some critical point of preparation to set his plan into action. He had laid specific plans to call the people to rebellion. He may have been in a public place, just about to call the people to revolt. Thus, it seems evident that Nephite law recognized the immanent incitement of rebellion as a completed crime; that point of law clearly stood behind by the arrest, conviction and execution of Paanchi. From several cases in the book of Alma, the Nephties had learned that a stronger stand needed to be taken more quickly to quell incipient rebellions before they generated a head of steam.
Other legal documents from antiquity can be cited in which it was already considered a capital offense at the point when plans were made and preparations had actually begun to incite a rebellion or to be on the brink of setting a plan of rebellion into action. According to these early sources, preparing a rebellion was itself a capital offense. Whether or not the plot ever got off the ground was legally irrelevant. One such case comes from an Egyptian account of a trial in 1164 BC concerning a conspiracy and rebellion. The Judicial Papyrus of Turin records the trial and execution of one Pai-bak-kamen. Like Paanchi, he was the leader of a group whom he incited, calling them to “gather people and stir up enemies to make rebellion against their lord”; many others who had colluded with him, and some, who were only remotely implicated, were also executed, mutilated, or left to commit suicide. Recent paleo-forensic examinations of the mummies indicate that that the rebellion was indeed successful and later was put down, but the public legal records would have wanted to deter any further rebellions by imposing the death penalty upon the uprisers as early in the process as possible.
Reflecting similar precautions, some very early ancient Near Eastern treaties required vassals to prevent conspiracies against the overlord. A third-century BC treaty between Ebla and Abarsal placed heavy legal burdens on the rulers of Abarsal “to denounce any conspiracy against the ruler of Ebla.” Disloyalty or conspiring against a king could always land the perpetrators in serious trouble.
During the early Israelite monarchy, conspiracy was severely punished. The case of the priest Ahimelech, who had unwittingly given bread and a sword to David, shows that king Saul could treat even such incidental conduct as treasonous. King Saul executed Ahimelech and all of the members of his family, together with eighty-five priests (1 Samuel 22:13–18), on the ground that they had “conspired against [the king]” (1 Samuel 22:8), even though (as one must presume) most of the people who were executed had taken no actual specific action against Saul.
Another pre-exilic Israelite case of conspiracy is found in 2 Chronicles 33:24–25, when servants of King Amon, the son of Manasseh, “conspired against, and slew him in his own house.” All people who were in any way part of the conspiracy were killed, even though some of those victims probably had done no more than give their encouragement or acquiescence to the perpetrators. This assassination of Amon, which occurred in Jerusalem in 640 BC, would have been well known to the prophet Lehi, who was an Israelite youth at that time. While we do not know exactly how far Paanchi had gone, it was held “by the voice of the people” that, for legal purposes, he “had raised up in rebellion and sought to destroy the liberty of the people” (Helaman 1:8).
In spite of the involvement of the public in this proceeding, the execution of Paanchi evoked a powerful objection among Paanchi’s followers. They enlisted Kishkumen to kill the chief judge Pahoran (see Helaman 1:9). From this one may assume that Pahoran had been instrumental in seeking for justice in the case against Paanchi before the people. And indeed, Kishkumen approached the judgment seat in disguise and murdered Pahoran.
With Paanchi and Pahoran both dead, their brother Pacumeni was appointed chief judge and governor by the voice of the people “to reign in the stead of” Pahoran, “according to his right” (Helaman 1:13), whatever that might mean. Kishkumen and his confederates then “entered into a covenant, yea swearing by their everlasting Maker, that they would tell no man that Kishkumen had murdered Pahoran” (Helaman 1:11). Because Kishkumen and his band then intermingled with the population, they could not easily be identified and prosecuted—although “as many as were found” were “condemned unto death” (Helaman 1:12). Apparently, these oath-swearing conspirators—like robbers or outlaws who had placed themselves outside of the law and therefore were not entitled to legal protections (as in the summary execution of the robber Zemnarihah in 3 Nephi 4:28)—were held incontestably guilty upon arrest.
As the Nephite government struggled in its campaign against these terrorists at home, matters grew worse due to external pressures. Within a single year, sensing a moment of weakness in the shaky leadership of the Nephite government, a Lamanite army invaded Zarahemla, and Pacumeni was killed by Coriantumr (see Helaman 1:21). Coriantumr was “a descendant of Zarahemla” (Helaman 1:15). As a descendant of the Mulekite king of the land of Zarahemla, Coriantumr could plausibly stake a legal claim to kingship, and he had little trouble being appointed leader of a Lamanite army to invade the land of Zarahmela (Helaman 1:16–17).
Meanwhile, with Pacumeni now dead, another “contention” arose among the Nephites “concerning who should fill the judgment-seat” because there was “no one to fill the judgment-seat” from Pahoran’s family (Helaman 2:1). The populace turned back to the family of Alma for leadership, and Helaman, the son of Helaman and the grandson of Alma the Younger, was legally appointed “by the voice of the people” to serve as the new chief judge (Helaman 2:2).
John W. Welch, “The Case of Paanchi,” in The Legal Cases in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: BYU Press and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2008), 311–322.